OUTREACH

The Institute of Evolutionary Biology is committed to informing and educating the general public about the research being carried out at the Institute. Every year, IBE organizes and participates in several outreach activities.

El llarg viatge de la papallona Vanessa cardui

This outreach video illustrates the longest migratory journey of any species of insects: the round-trip migration of the Vanessa cardui (Painted lady) butterfly between northern Europe and the African savannah. This extraordinary trip is repeated year after year by millions of specimens!

Melanogaster Catch The Fly

González lab is leading a new citizen science project thanks to a fellowship granted by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT). This project, named "Melanogaster: Catch the Fly", aims at bringing science to high school students, teachers, and public at large of small towns of central and south Spain. Participants will collect, classify, and analyze samples that will then be used to accomplish the objectives of the ERC-Consolidator project recently awarded to the Evolutionary and Functional Genomics lab.

Butterflies in a click

The huge variety of colours and patterns on butterfly wings is a spectacle of nature and a source of inspiration for those studying evolution. Thousands of species all over the world have a unique look, but it often requires a good eye to observe the subtleties of their beauty. Researchers from the Butterfly Diversity and Evolution Lab at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC-UPF) show the details captured by their camera lens, offering fascinating images of European butterflies. Please contact us if you are interested in hosting the exhibition.

PRBB Open Day

The IBE participate every year with several activities, including the scientific conferences, photography exhibitions, workshops and many of us who volunteer for guiding the tours around the PRBB building. This event usually takes place on the first Saturday in October of every year.

La Ciència Al Teu Món

Several PIs and students at the IBE are collaborating with La Ciència Al Teu Món (LCATM) outreach project lead by Josefa González. Besides raising awareness of the importance and the implications of Science in everyday life, LCATM also aims at conveying the value of a scientific way of thinking and a rational attitude towards problems.

Saló de l'Ensenyament (Teaching Fair)

IBE collaborates with the stand of the Catalan Delegation of CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas), at the ‘Space Science’, which aims to bring the centres’ research to young people who visit the show. The ‘Space Science’ is organized by the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation (FCRI). The objective of the Education Fair is to inform children and young people between 12 and 18 years about the training at all levels in Catalonia.

A yearly programme of hands-on activities for high-school science teachers. Courses include scientific lectures on cutting-edge evolutionary biology topics by our scientists, practical lab activities and exercises. These activities aim to get teachers working side-by-side with our scientists to produce educational materials that can then be taken back to the classroom, and to create useful and lasting networks between scientists and teachers to the ultimate benefit of their students.

Science and Young people in collaboration with Catalunya-La Pedrera Foundation

This is a program of short-term (1-2 months) internships for pre-selected secondary school students interested in science, organized and supported by Catalunya-La Pedrera Foundation. The students engage directly in scientific research guided by and collaborating with senior researchers who are at least at the PhD student level. Registrations are done through a dedicated website of Catalunya-La Pedrera Foundation.

Science at Christmas

A responsible, critical society must incorporate scientific knowledge into its educational system as well as into everyday discussion. It is necessary to uphold knowledge and rational thinking as an essential part of our culture. This is the spirit of the “Science at Christmas” lecture series, which are held at the CCCB every December and are co-organized by Ricard Solé.

Science at Schools Day

The Science at Schools Day is one of the emblematic activities of the Science and Classroom Programme organized by the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation. During the same day 100 research professionals, among them IBE scientists, give lectures simultaneously in hundreds of schools to arouse and encourage the interest of young people to science and technology.

Science Week

IBE participates in the Science Week activities by offering both schools and the general public hands-on activities based on research projects taht are currently being pursued at the Institute. Those tours and workshops take place at the Mediterranean Center for Marine and Environmental Research (CMIMA) and are organied in collaboration with the Institute of Marine Sciences.

Activities for students in collaboration with the PRBB

The PRBB provides a programme of activities for high school students. As part of the initiative Escolab, IBE offered high school students the chance to get to know the PRBB and some of its facilities and lines of research. The programme consists of a brief presentation of the park, a visit to one of the scientific-technical services and a talk by a researcher who explains their work.

PlayDecide is a discussion game for high school students to debate socio-scientific issues. It was developed as part of a project involving different EU countries to encourage public participation in such debates. Currently, there are more than 30 PlayDecide kits in different languages dealing with topics as diverse as climate change, pre-natal selection, animal testing, and nanotechnology. The PlayDecide workshops that the IBE offered were about genomics and evolution.

IBE researchers also gave scientific talks that took place in the PRBB conference hall, which can hold up to 250 people.

Barcelona International Youth Science Challenge

BIYSC is an international gathering in Barcelona of bright young researchers from all over the world. They meet together for two weeks to be inspired by internationally eminent science and technology leaders and to take part in specific Science and Technology challenges lead by top international Research Centres in Barcelona. IBE participated with a course named "Uncovering the hidden diversity of the oceans" and led by scientists from the Multicellgenome lab.

One-off activities

Top Ciencia IBE

During one year, IBE research was highlighted at Cosmocaixa, the science museum of Barcelona managed by ”la Caixa” Foundation, in a space of the museum that is aimed at promoting scientific careers and showing Spanish cutting-edge research. The Top Ciència area was composed of different audio-visual and interactive materials to know better what evolutionary biology is and what kind of research IBE scientists perform. The exhibition began with a life size video introduction by Xavier Bellés that briefly explained the research programmes at IBE. There were two games: one for explaining phylogenetic trees and another game to explain how scientists calculate the percentage of similarity between two species. For those interested in history, an interactive chronogram offered further information about the milestones in evolutionary biology. The exhibition also included a display cabinet with specimens from the IBE collections, which includes butterflies, beetles and reptiles.

Explora el Bosc

IBE prepared a course about diversity and evolution called "Explora el Bosc", in collaboration with the "Exploratori dels Recursos de la Naturalesa", on July 12, 2016, in Berga. The day began with presentations about biodiversity, insect collecting and animal identification. Then we move to the Obaga de Queralt to implement the knowledge acquired, although especiments collected were released in order not to disturb the ecosystem.

Fronteres del Coneixement & (R)evolució

Researchers at the Institute of evolutionary Biology discussed several topics such as predicting the behaviour of biological systems, butterfly diversity, the origin of multicellularity, the role of genes in our decisions, and the past of human species through the genome. The talks took place in 2013 and a series of videos were produced and are available at http://fronteresdelconeixement.cat/.

Bee Devices and other curious observations

The research group led by Luc Steels at IBE co-organized an exhibition about bees, art and technology. Given the situation of bees and the catastrophic environmental consequences if they become extinct, this exhibition, which will travelled around the world during 2015, aimed to show not only the result of years of research with bees, but also to raise awareness about this problem both within the general population and the scientific community.

+Humans Exhibition and CCCB Debats

These two activities that took place in the Centre de Cultura Contemporània of Barcelona were participated by IBE scientists, especially by Ricard Solé. Artists and scientists explored uncharted territory that relates to the present by, more importantly potential futures. They exhibit and the debates sought to share with citizens the state of the art but also what scientists do best: asking all those open questions that will affect our near and far-distant future.

BioScience Pro Meeting

This conference fro 250 students aged between 12 and 18, consisted in five talks by researchers on evolutionary biology, genetics, biomedicine and biotechnology. Additionally, selected high school students had the chance to present their project in a talk or a poster session. The highlight of the day was the seminar of Michael Levitt, 2013 Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry. The event was organized by Josefa Gonzalez in collaboration with LCATM and took place in November 2015. .